Healers need an overhaul

[Avoidy]

Braindead jobs see way more play than complex ones. Square knows this; it's why they keep dumbing down jobs for mass appeal. It's happening to dps jobs now as well.
The trend has only continued in this direction. I seriously doubt they're gonna make a complex healer. If they did, it'd just wind up like AST, "unique" for one expansion and then beaten down until it's just another basic bitch. Remember when people thought SGE would solve the healer problem? lol. lmao.

Saying this as someone who only healed for a straight year in this game, just give up and play something else. The devs have chosen their path, and the destination is snoozeville. Also if I'm being real, even in basic dutyfinder dailies I'll watch people die because they weren't esuna'd. I really get the sense that anyone who gave a shit about this role has abandoned it, and the only people left are just in it to hit 1 button all day long.

[SylvAlternate]

Haven't read the entire thread so sorry if this was already brought up, but it would be nigh impossible to give healers a tank-like rotation without going over the controller button limit or removing useful healing actions

about half of a tank's entire toolkit is dedicated to dealing damage, if we take this to healers then controller players get fucked with like 50 buttons they need to press
and as for removing healing actions, the only one that you could really remove on Scholar is Physick, I find myself using every single other ability several times a fight (adlo, succor and emergency a lot less on reclears, but they're still essential)

the only way to give Healers an interesting rotation is either something lke SMN where youre still basically just spamming 1 button, or expanding on gimmicks like cards, aetherflow and lilies in ways that don't require too many buttons

[ty_taurus]

Haven't read the entire thread so sorry if this was already brought up, but it would be nigh impossible to give healers a tank-like rotation without going over the controller button limit or removing useful healing actions

about half of a tank's entire toolkit is dedicated to dealing damage, if we take this to healers then controller players get fucked with like 50 buttons they need to press
and as for removing healing actions, the only one that you could really remove on Scholar is Physick, I find myself using every single other ability several times a fight (adlo, succor and emergency a lot less on reclears, but they're still essential)

the only way to give Healers an interesting rotation is either something lke SMN where youre still basically just spamming 1 button, or expanding on gimmicks like cards, aetherflow and lilies in ways that don't require too many buttons

You can be really strategic with how actions work to promote more actions without increasing button totals. Take the new SMN for example. Overall rotation aside... it does a really great job of using certain buttons for multiple things and change it according to your actions. An example they did for SCH was changing Consolation so that it now replaces Summon Seraph while Seraph is summoned, because there's no actual need to have access to both buttons independently. There's room still to consolidate on the healers in places, such as Draw and Play on AST and Aetherpact and Summon Eos/Selene on SCH. A suggestion that was brought up a while ago on the healer forums was removing Esuna and making Cure/Physick/Benefic/Diagnosis remove 1 detrimental effect instead which a lot of people liked. Giving AoE spells some type of purpose in single target situations, such as providing some type of buff or debuff you would want in single target environments, would take an existing button that currently has no use in boss content and add it to your "rotation." SGE specifically could cut certain buttons and change them into offensive spells that instead grant the replaced effect to their Kardia target. For example, kill Krasis and replace it with an offensive spell that's as strong as Dosis III, but increases the amount of HP recovered by your Kardia target instead of just healing them. That could give SGE a more versatile offensive library while interacting with its core mechanic more. Then there's also the arguement that some OGCD healing could stand to be culled as we have an excess of healing resources in regards to most content right now.

So I do think there's room to more adequately balance each healer's tools between offensive and healing, and that can come in varying degrees.

[Supersnow845]

Haven't read the entire thread so sorry if this was already brought up, but it would be nigh impossible to give healers a tank-like rotation without going over the controller button limit or removing useful healing actions

about half of a tank's entire toolkit is dedicated to dealing damage, if we take this to healers then controller players get fucked with like 50 buttons they need to press
and as for removing healing actions, the only one that you could really remove on Scholar is Physick, I find myself using every single other ability several times a fight (adlo, succor and emergency a lot less on reclears, but they're still essential)

the only way to give Healers an interesting rotation is either something lke SMN where youre still basically just spamming 1 button, or expanding on gimmicks like cards, aetherflow and lilies in ways that don't require too many buttons

They just need to remove the endless bloat of oGCD’s in this game, that frees up buttons to allow for more damage and it also rebalances GCD heals because they go back to becoming needed again because you can’t oGCD everything

[BRVV]

I play on controller and have easy access to 3 Cross hotbars without using the "switch to another hotbar". You can set them up. If all controler players would just take 30 minutes aside to look at the options...

But how many buttons are 3 cross hotbars. One is 16, so 48. Yep. 48 WITHOUT switching. My limit button isn't even on there ^^. Easy space. If you want to know how many are displayed without pressing a button (for info on recast) the answer is 2 bars, so 32.

[Lazariah]

There's lots of issues with changing how healers work, as others have pointed out. The fight philosophy cannot change without changing every single other class and every fight in the game so that wont happen. We're stuck with very predictable damage that requires healing. I say embrace heals that do DPS. Assize is fun as heck and ALWAYS feels good to use. Earthly Star? Always feels good when it goes off. Kardia? Every hit is a heal and that is awesome.

I'm not saying EVERYTHING should heal and do damage, but making certain things also do damage would end up creating a rotation for high end and just be a fun bonus at low end. You will still have the raw heals for big damage bursts and tank busters, just more option to press if you are casual and feel like it and more to do if you are not and trying to min max DPS.

Because lets face it, high end raiding is ALL about DPS. No healer main in Savage content or higher I've known cares about how well they heal. People are alive? Cool. We didn't down the boss because of low DPS? F. That is not going to change, ever. Because the fight philosophy in this game wont change. It actively encourages healers to care more about their DPS.

But we also don't want to alienate more casual players and new players. And I think YoshP worries about that too much. I think he went overboard. I just hope he realizes there are ways to keep raiders happy while not making non raiders unhappy.

[Deceptus]

Sure but why do all 4 healers need to revolve around 1 taste, like we don’t make every class a proc based free form rotation class because some people love current BRD

My problem is they had this right years ago, WHM really hasn’t changed much, why did SCH and AST have to be gutted because some people liked WHM

Unfortunately AST was always the problem child ever since it was implemented. It was either too strong in the healing department with the benefits of card buffs, or it was average and the card buffs didn't bring it up to par with SCH/WHM.

So SE's grand solution was to bring both SCH and WHM to the AST DPS model of a single dot and a single filler spell (riveting gameplay!). Where they screwed up royally is AST had that dps rotation BECAUSE most of their downtime was spent with cards.

So pre-Endwalker we had 2 healers, that didn't have constant job identity actions every 30s, using the model of a job that did and It.Just.Didn't.Work.

It's not fun.

[ForteNightshade]

I love healers are they are and I don't want a more complicated DPS rotation! Not everyone shares the same taste.

If you don't touch any harder content than 24 mans, then the inclusion of more DPS buttons or "complexity" doesn't impact you in the slightest. You could literally never press any of those new buttons and still clear the content you want to.

That's the issue here. With a higher skill ceiling people who want more engaging stuff to do on their respective jobs have that option. As things are now, I'm bored to tears spamming Dosis III 500 times in Aglaia while you get to have fun. Doesn't seem fair does it?

[IDontPetLalas]

Unfortunately AST was always the problem child ever since it was implemented. It was either too strong in the healing department with the benefits of card buffs, or it was average and the card buffs didn't bring it up to par with SCH/WHM.

So SE's grand solution was to bring both SCH and WHM to the AST DPS model of a single dot and a single filler spell (riveting gameplay!). Where they screwed up royally is AST had that dps rotation BECAUSE most of their downtime was spent with cards.

So pre-Endwalker we had 2 healers, that didn't have constant job identity actions every 30s, using the model of a job that did and It.Just.Didn't.Work.

It's not fun.

Only "most of AST downtime being occupied with cards" isn't even the case, it's only a fraction of downtime. Most of it is still hitting 1 DPS button, it's only marginally more interesting,

I would expect that the opener is where a fair number of people might disagree that AST can be more challenging to play well.

[Liam_Harper]

They just need to remove the endless bloat of oGCD’s in this game, that frees up buttons to allow for more damage and it also rebalances GCD heals because they go back to becoming needed again because you can’t oGCD everything

It annoyed me they're so stubborn about not adding more dps that they added rubbish filler like Krasis and Aquaveil instead. They didn't think players could handle one more damage button, even at nearly max level.

While the lv86 abilities do technically have uses, we really didn't need them. They just exist for the sake of adding something. Lv86 would have been a perfect slot for more dps without overwhelming players.